Monday, October 31, 2011

Hot damn! Has it been two weeks already? The fucking gout has gotten me semi clean but constantly craving potato chips. I'm currently up to 6 big sized bag of chips per week. If I can't have booze or meat, I need to clog my arteries somehow with tasty, over salted deep fried potatoes. These treats shall keep me at my ideal chunky body build.

I would like to start the week with an awesomely printed shirt every week. This one courtesy of Joey Potts for the group Nones is pretty fucking great.

Any art show can only be enhanced with the beauty that is free beer. And if that beer happens to be an excellent IPA, how can one resist? By having a massive gout flare.

The space was in an old vintage style store front all with original moldings and antique tiles. It was the perfect space to hang a Justin Bieber inspired piece.

Speak of the devil! This beaut was done by Sam Alcarez. I have never seen Justin look so soulless yet so sexy at the same time.

Only problem was that we had to jerry rig spot lights. My phone sucks at taking cool pictures but the homie Tommie does not suck at taking pictures and he just happened to take a shit load of pics for me.

The spewing blue dragon.

Uriel Correa. His work fucking ruled this space. Real intricate and colorful.

I don't want to know how long this took, I just want it in my house hanging over my bed.

Looks like baby got put in the corner.

Despite having the gout, I still checked out Telegraph - a new addition to the already bustling corner that is Diversey and Milwaukee ave.

A new restaurant that focuses on wine and wine pairings complete with the male cast of Sex and The City. As I teased, I realized how much of a date place this is.

My date being Tony, I was ready to hurl. Sitting at the end of the community table alone didn't help the situation. I think most of the people at the restaurants thought we were gay Korean twins.

The foie gras option was pretty good. It was used as more of a spread to toast the bread rather than leaving it as the tasty inhumane chunk of liver that we are used to having it served.

The pasta dish was fucking amazing. It's hard to cook pasta perfectly during service and even harder to have it appreciated. Kudos the Italian grandma, Mexican cook, or recently graduated know it all culinary student that was in charge of pasta. It was damn tasty.

One good thing about not drinking is waking up without a shit hangover. I draw a lot more constantly thinking about beer, whiskey, bourbon, wine, vodka, gin, tequila, and zima.

I love shopping at Restaurant Depot. Its a playground full of anything and everything food related, like an IKEA for the kitchen. You see a bunch of random shit you don't need but end up buying because you think you'll use it in the future, but it'll end up in the drawer next to that cherry pitter you never used.

There's also a shit load of ham. This made my gout foot just tingle in anger, but made my penis hard.

Speaking of erections, I did the annual Thanksgiving board over at Goose Island Clybourn. Complete with a murderous goose ready to get its turkey on.

I have no idea why a bunch of grapes or a tomato apple would be part of a fall cornucopia of food.

From one pumpkin bringing bounty to another being used for decorative purposes and rotting away slowly. Unless it chalked or spray painted.

Game day for Brew Hey Hey. Here is Spiteful Brewing's equipment, ready to spew out tasty libations and make ugly people attractive.

Getting into the spirit, Tommy who took amazing photos during the event, just finished eating out a girl on her period. Different strokes for different folks.

Corazon brewery came equipped with makeup artist to make them look less girly.

It doesn't look crowded, but at least a good 200 people ended showing up and getting they drank on.

Beer celebrity and advocate for craft beer Greg Koch was in the house ready to test out his metabolism with locally brewed beer and snacks.

I can't tell who's in costume and who isn't. All I know is that I peed a shit ton. All water and no beer will do that to you I guess.

I know this was supposed to be a costume but he could easily pass for douche bag hipster hanging out at Debonair on a Monday night.

He - Man has lost some weight during his unemployment. I'm glad he's still able to pose with a smile.

Pretty much sums up the night. After a long day of drinking excellent craft beers, you just kind of want a PBR to end your night.

This is also the winner of the costume contest. When asked exactly what it is, he replied "sexy zombie Abe Lincoln." With a pair of new Adidas. Can't front, this mothafucka has nice legs.

You can see the complete set of awesome photos here.Nothing tops an awesome beer event like having to cook a 5 course brunch the next day for Stone Brewery at work. It was cool to see Greg Koch mingling, drinking, and eating your food. Life is good for now...

Monday, October 17, 2011

This is day 4 of my flare up and as you can see, the hair growth on my foot hasn't stopped at all, thank goodness that rogaine finally kicked in. I should have a full furry foot by winter's end. For anybody that has ever had a gout flare up last more than 2 days will attest to how fucking painful that shit is. Just saying "the gout" is disgusting enough. I may have over done it in Denver with the booze and meats.

Making and eating food like this probably never helps with the purine levels in my body. How can you say no to a good Belgium style pot of mussels though? Gout is God's true curse to humans.

Also painting on my feet for about 4 hours and walking in shitty chucks can never help either.

I must have taken acid right before I painted this. This somehow says what it says.

Out of all the old schoolers in Chicago that is still active and painting, Labrat has definitely stood out with his dedication to keep with the art and make sure he stays current. So many old school writers here get stuck in their ways and think that they don't have to change but true writers/artists like Labrat keep that momentum going and its damn refreshing that he can still school new writers with the best of them. He also has one of the most epic toy collections ever...these two things have to be related somehow.

Here's Cyfn showing us that you can accomplish anything no matter how tight your pants are.

Repos got lazy and just looked at his shirt for his fill in.

I'm an avid rider and supporter of the CTA and have been since a youth and I have seen my share of shit go down on both the train and bus routes. Out of the almost 25 years of riding the CTA, nothing has bothered me more than the "just came out of the closet" guy. I'm sure Sanjeet here from Naperburg had it hard growing up coming from a strict family, yadda yadda yadda. Now that he's in the "big city," his main priority is to let everyone know he's gay. I get it...in fact its pretty fucking obvious, so just relax and stop trying to be friends with every single white female on the bus. WE FUCKING GET IT.

I have no idea what possessed me to make Greek Moussaka, but I did and it was a pain in the ass. A delicious pain in the ass, but pain in the ass nonetheless. Pain in the ass, pain in the ass, pain in the ass...yes I can say it one more time.

Checked out Portishead at the Aragon this week and holy shit was it worth the wait. I went with my sexy gout boot and sweated to the what is one of my favorite top ten groups of all time.

Only thing that sucked was the $3.00 cup of fucking tap water. I feel like management sat around and joked about whether or not they would be able to do this and sure enough...fucking assholes. As if the 7 dollar BUD options weren't bad enough but charging 3 dollars for a basic necessity like water is just evil. It's probably so they can pay for their fucking Roman vomitorium style bathrooms. Fucking stupid.

Nonetheless, the show was amazing and its awesome and weird to see Beth Gibbons so happy and energetic considering how depressing most of her songs are. I can finally cross them off my bucket list...Elton John is the only person left on my list...fingers crossed for a tour.

A lot of out of towners in this past weekend and what better way to greet them with my sexy gout boot? This beaut made my walking experience this past week bearable. Although the pain was still prevalent however the next picture would prove to be quite the effective remedy.

Plus the word "medical" is in the title so how can it be bad? My only concern is how identical the container looked to a semen and urine sample cup.

Graffiti tour day.

MSK never ceases to amaze me at how high they set the standard with their productions and skill level. It's also scary to see how many letters and logos were familiar to me from just straight marketing and commercials.

Sucks to see a legend of style capped by these two poles for a billboard ad. I can't speak for anybody else, but Syse along with the other Feds like East (see previous post) were inspirations for me and I copied the shit out of them.

This was truly a gem to see. Haven't seen an Empo-wer piece in a while. Such a solid dude and piece.

Always loved seeing Shred pieces as well. Styles like this can cross decades and its relieving to see that the ability to painting pieces really never leave your system.

They stuck Cove near anything that resembled a fence so he can feel at home.

Fucking Ruben killllllllllled this wall. My shit 3gs phone does this wall no justice. Its about time he painted the outside considering how much time he spends inside.

Omens...dude just got sooooo good sooooo fast.

So speaking of drunk Mexicans, Pilsen had its annual open studio walk thing...perfect for out of towners to see how many a lot of crappy art.

The art walk consisted of homes, shops, halls, cafes, alley's, elotes carts...basically anything with a wall with yet another set of photo prints was considered to be a gallery.

Although some of the spots were really cool and vintagey.

I would like to live here so I can see that portrait of my aunt everyday.

Went well the hell out of the way off the main strip to visit the homie Rahmaan who has had a studio in Hector Duarte's space for years.

He doesn't have to look at porn, he can just paint it. Needless to say, I'm pretty fucking jealous of dudes skills.

I have no idea why I thought this was hilarious.

This is how all art walks should end, with a trip to the Mexican candy shop.

Um, translator please?

I was a bit overwhelmed with all of the weird looking vegetable candies and guacamole chips and settled for what was either a corn on the cob or a yellow grenade. It looks gross but...it kind of was.

I think Chicago may have worn these Texans out. They did have to walk more than a city block which is dubbed as a "Texas Mile" in San Antonio.

I have another out of town friend coming in soon with an art opening at 2620 W. Washington this Friday 10/21 so we'll see what I get into next. I also havent drank or eaten meat in like a week straight which has to be some kind of record for me. My gout flare is better but only time will tell. No worries because no matter how much less I drink or eat carnivorously, I'll still be an asshole.

Also have to send a shout out to Celisa for being an equally awesome tour guide when she wasn't busy yapping about her boyfriend or texting him constantly or bleeding. BOOOOOOOYAHHHHHHH!!!